Vita Hannah Arendt

This table of data is based on the “Tabellarische Lebenslauf,” published in Hannah 
 Arendt: Ich will verstehen: Selbstauskuenfte zu Leben und Werk, ed. with a complete
 bibliography by Ursula Ludz (Munich-Zurich: Piper Verlag [Serie Piper, 4591], 
2005, 7th ed., 2013), pp. 251-256.

1906, October 14 – Born in Hannover, Germany, the only child of Paul Arendt, an engineer, and his wife Martha, née Cohn; official name: Johanna Arendt, after her paternal grandmother (Both parents were Jews from Koenigsberg [East Prussia]; Hannah Arendt once wrote that she grew up in a “typically German-Jewish assimilated milieu.”)

1909 The family moved to Koenigsberg

1913 Grandfather Max Arendt died; father died after long illness of progressive paralysis (In 1920, Martha Arendt remarried [Martin Beerwald, a widower with two daughters: Clara and Eva].)

1913-24 At school in Koenigsberg and Berlin, partly self-educated, enrolled at Berlin University, educated by private teachers; graduation (Abitur) in Koenigsberg as a non-matriculated student in 1924

1924-28 Studied philosophy (major), Protestant theology and Greek at the universities of Marburg, Freiburg, and Heidelberg; teachers were: M. Heidegger, E. Husserl, K. Jaspers; R. Bultmann, M. Dibelius; O. Regenbogen

1928, November – Ph.D. in Heidelberg; superviser of dissertation: K. Jaspers, topic: Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin (published 1929, reprinted in 2003, 2006; English edition (ed. and revised by J. Vecchiarelli Scott and J. Chelius Stark): Love and Saint Augustin, 1996)

1929, September – Married  Guenther Stern (Anders) in Nowawes near Berlin (For a short period of time, the Sterns lived in Frankfurt/Main.)

1930-33 Research on “the problem of German-Jewish assimilation, exemplified by the life of Rahel Varnhagen,” sponsored by the Rescue Society of German Science [Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft] and by a Jewish organization; first publications as a freelance writer

1933, July – Arrested in Berlin; after release, flight from Germany

1933-40 Lived in Paris; deprivation of German citizenship in 1937

1933-37 Activities (“social work”) within the scope of Zionist politics; founder of the French branch of  Youth Aliyah (1935); three-month stay in Palestine (1935)

1936, Spring –  Met Heinrich Bluecher

1937-38 Resumed scholarly work, completed book on Rahel Varnhagen based on her post-doctoral research (first published in an English translation in 1958;  German original published in 1959); began work on the history of anti-Semitism; gave lectures

1938-40 After the November pogroms in Germany, returned to “social work” organizing the “immigration of children and adults from Central Europe to France” in cooperation with the Jewish Agency for Palestine, Jerusalem, and French Zionists

1940, January – Married Heinrich Bluecher, after having divorced Guenther Stern (1937)

1940,  May-July – Five weeks of internship as “hostile alien” in camp Gurs in southern France; thereafter, escape via Lourdes (stay with Walter Benjamin) to friends in Montauban

1941, January – Left France by train and travelled via Spain to Portugal

1941, January through May – In Lisbon as a stateless refugee

1941, May – Arrived in New York by ship, together with Heinrich Bluecher (Her mother arrived one month later and lived with the Bluechers until her death [July 27, 1948].)

1941, May until end of life – Resident in New York City; granted American citizenship in December 1951

1941-52 A political writer and lecturer: published articles in Aufbau (collected and republished in 2000) and other particularly American-Jewish papers and/or journals; worked with the Commission on European Jewish Cultural Reconstruction; lectured at various New York academic institutions

1944-46 Director of studies at the Conference on Jewish Relations (Commission on European Jewish Cultural Reconstruction)

1946-48 Chief editor at Schocken Books, New York

1949-52 Executive Secretary of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, New York

1949-50, November through March – First trip to Europe on behalf of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction: extensive travelling in the Federal Republic of Germany, including a stay in Berlin; reunion with K. Jaspers, M. Heidegger, and friends from former times

1950, June – Began notes in the Denktagebuch [thought journal]; 28 notebooks in all (until 1973) published posthumously in 2002

1951 Publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism / The Burden of Our Time (German edition in 1955: Elemente und Urspruenge totaler Herrschaft)

1952-53 Work on a research project , “Totalitarian Elements of Marxism,” sponsored by the Guggenheim Foundation
 
1952 Heinrich Bluecher given a permanent position as professor of philosophy at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

1953, October/November – Six Lectures held within the Christian Gauss Seminars on Criticism at Princeton University on “Karl Marx and the Tradition of Western [Political] Thought” (partly published posthumously)

1954, March – Three-part lecture at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana, on “Philosophy and Politics: The Problem of Action and Thought after the French Revolution” (partly published posthumously)

1955, Spring – Visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley: lecture on “History of Political Theory,” and two seminars

1955, Autumn –  Travelled as lecturer and tourist, in Italy, Greece, Israel, Switzerland, and the Federal Republic of Germany 

1956, April – Six Walgreen Lectures at the University of Chicago on “The Labor of Man's Body and the Work of His Hands” (resulting in The Human Condition [1958], German edition: Vita activa [1960])

1956, Autumn – Trip to Europe: research sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and lectures

1958, April through June – Trip to Europe, including, among others, lectures in Bremen (“Die Krise in der Erziehung” [“The Crisis in Education,” published in 1958]), Zurich (“Freiheit und Politik” [“Freedom and Politics,” published in 1960]), Munich (“Kultur und Politik” [“Culture and Politics,”  published in 2007])

1958, September – Laudatio for K. Jaspers when he was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in Frankfurt/Main

1959, Spring – Visiting professor at Princeton University: lecture on “The United States and the Revolutionary Spirit” (resulting in On Revolution [1963], in German Ueber die Revolution [1965])

1959, September – Awarded the Lessing Prize of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg

1959, December – Moved from Morningside Heights to 370 Riverside Drive, where she lived until death

1960-61 Various appointments as visiting professor: Columbia University (Fall 1960); Northwestern University (Spring 1961); Wesleyan University (Fall 1961)

1961, April and June – Present at the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem as a reporter for The New Yorker

1961 Publication of Between Past and Future, a collection of six [later eight] “Exercises in Political Thought” (in German published in an enlarged edition: Zwischen Vergangenheit und Zukunft [1994])

1962, March –  Hospitalized after a serious traffic accident while riding in a taxi in New York

1962, Autumn – Guest lectures at the University of Chicago; thereafter, seminar at Wesleyan University

1963, February - The New Yorker began its five-part series of “A Reporter at Large: Eichmann in Jerusalem”; in March the series appeared as a book: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (revised German edition: Eichmann in Jerusalem: Ein Bericht von der Banalitaet des Boesen, 1964)

1963, February through June – Travelled in Europe, including an extensive vacation trip with Heinrich Bluecher and Lotte Beradt in Greece and Italy

1963-67 Professor (with reduced teaching load and specially arranged hours) at the University of Chicago, Committee of Social Thought, lectures included: “Introduction into Politics,” “Basic Moral Propositions”; courses at the New School for Social Research, New York, included: “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy” (published posthumously in 2003, German edition in 2006)

1964 Awarded membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters

1965 Visiting professor at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

1967-75 University Professor at the New School for Social Research, N.Y.; among lectures: “Philosophy and Politics”, “Kant’s Political Philosophy” (published in 1982; in German 1985)

1967, October – Awarded in absentia the Sigmund-Freud-Preis for scholarly prose by the Deutsche Akademie fuer Sprache und Dichtung [German Academy for Language and Poetry]

1968 Publication of Men in Dark Times, a collection of literary portraits (enlarged German edition: Menschen in finsteren Zeiten, 1989)

1969, February – K. Jaspers died

1969, Summer – In Europe (with Heinrich Bluecher); for several weeks in Tegna-Locarno, Switzerland (In almost all the next years, Arendt stayed some weeks in the Casa Barbatè in Tegna.)

1970, October – Heinrich Bluecher died

1971 “Thinking and Moral Considerations” appeared (Work begun on the second volume of The Human Condition, i.e., The Life of the Mind.)

1971, November – The German Supreme Court decided in favor of Arendt’s appeal for restitution payments (“Lex Arendt”)

1972, November – Participation in conference titled “The Work of Hannah Arendt” at York University in Toronto, Canada (conference proceedings published in 1979)

1973, April through May – Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland: “The Life of the Mind, First Series: Thinking” (published in 1978, in German 1979)

1974, May – Continuation of Gifford Lectures: “The Life of the Mind, Second Series: Willing” (broken off on May 10, due to heart attack)

1974, September – Wystan H. Auden died

1975, April – Awarded the Sonning Prize for Contributions to European Culture by the Danish government (Her ceremonial address was published in 2003, in German in 2005.)

1975, May – Speech “Home to Roost” at the Boston Bicentennial Forum (published in 1976, in German in 1986)

1975, May through September – In Europe; among stopovers: Marbach (Deutsches Literaturarchiv), Tegna (work on The Life of the Mind; “Willing” [published 1978, in German 1979] and “Judging”), Freiburg (visit to M. Heidegger)

1975, December – Died of a heart attack in her New York apartment